Mystic Roots
by CrystallicSky
Summary: Jack discovers something interesting about his ancestry... CHACK, COMPLETE
1. The Discovery

**Mystic Roots**

**By: CrystallicSky**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Xiaolin Showdown or any of its characters, nor do I make any profit or attempt to with the writing of this or any of my other pieces.**

**Warnings: Language, homosexuality, some violence/gore later on, etc.**

**--**

Jack was both dizzy and a little winded from the speed at which he'd been flying for the past twenty minutes.

When he had woken up this morning and gone down to his lab for a leisurely day of inventing, the _last_ thing he had expected (and wanted) was to be greeted with the unwelcome reminder of having muted his Wu-Alarm for whatever reason the day previous. With the poor genius's terrible luck, it was little surprise that the damn thing had been going off for an hour already over something only a few continents over.

And, so had come about Jack's current circumstances, in which he was flying as hard and as fast as he possibly could down to New Zealand in search of the location he had pinpointed for the mystical object.

An old hand at flying by now, the goth felt no fear as he glanced at the ground far below him. It was only when he was on land; firmly grounded that he feared heights. Here in the air, completely free of his usual brand of clumsiness and instead imbued with all the natural aerial grace of a bird, he was practically a god.

A sharp beep startled the 'god' out of his reverie and he offered a quick glance to his Wu-Alarm: he was very close, within several miles of the object. Jack allowed himself to drop in altitude a bit, bringing him closer to the ground and making it easier for him to see any potential signs of Wu-related activity as he meticulously traced the thing's signal.

It was particularly hard to miss a giant-formed Dojo taking a nap outside of a thickly forested mountain area, Jack mused. Where there was Dojo, there were undeniably going to be monks so he was on the right track, at least.

The genius couldn't help but wonder how much trouble the Xiaolin were having in obtaining the Wu if Dojo had not only opted to wait outside, but had fallen asleep doing so.

Jack deftly put it out of his mind and continued to track the Wu's signal over the dense forest, only pausing as he spotted a relatively small break in tree cover. From the looks of it, it was a primitive settlement, complete with huts and tribal garb and tattoos; the works.

The goth could say honestly he didn't give much of a fuck _what_ kind of people currently had the Shen Gong Wu, only that it would soon be his.

Psyching himself up for a battle, he landed in the center of the village and allowed the blades of his helipack to retreat into the contraption itself. A few nearby people glanced over and stared oddly at him, but he paid them no mind: he had received similar looks all over the world, as people tend to give you odd looks when you come flying in out of seemingly nowhere.

Jack instead glanced hurriedly around for anything out of the ordinary and soon spotted the monks mere feet away, arguing with what looked to be a chieftain unsuccessfully over what looked a little like an erhu. He breathed a sigh of relief as he realized that he was literally _just_ in time.

"Hey, Xiaolin losers," he barked, standing straight and refusing to let his voice betray whatever nervousness he felt, "don't even _think_ about it! That Wu is mine!"

The goth couldn't help but feel a tiny bit self-conscious when _every_ head turned and locked onto him. Of course, he'd _wanted_ to be paid attention, but…

Well, he was kinda figuring only the people close to him would look over, not the whole damn _village._

The monks scowled at him, clearly irritated with his presence and attempted claim upon the Shen Gong Wu. Omi's mouth opened, obviously intent on spewing forth some idiom horridly mangled beyond recognition.

He did not get a chance to speak it.

Quite suddenly, Jack was surrounded; not by monks, as he'd expected, but by the New Zealand natives. The lot of them rushed over in droves and formed a tight circle around the youth, peering almost frighteningly closely at him.

It was a very, very, _very_ unmanly thing to do, but Jack couldn't much help it: he squeaked.

The goth was not at all used to people being so close to him, much less so _interested,_ but interested these ones were without doubt. Their dark-skinned faces were easily read and bore not only curiosity, but wonder and confusion as they stared and muttered quietly in a foreign tongue amongst themselves. Jack vaguely heard the monks mumbling snide and somewhat bewildered comments from where they were, but he had bigger issues to deal with at the moment, namely the fact that he was surrounded by a bunch of primitive people gawking like fish at him and now beginning to gesture with obvious puzzlement at his face.

Jack swallowed hard, taking an instinctive step back. He might as well not have moved at all, as the step brought him no closer or further away from the natives who simply moved their circle with him. "Ummm…" he began quietly, "th…this is kind of an invasion of my personal space…"

It didn't even occur to the genius, as unnerved as he was, that these people likely spoke no Chinese and hadn't the slightest idea what he was saying. All he knew was that this was _creepy._

The people reacted to the fact that he'd spoken, at the least, and attempted speaking to him. While Jack did not know the language they spoke, he knew it to be Maori, the shared name of the people and tongue of New Zealand natives. Unfortunately, this was one language that he had never put on his list of, 'To Learn' and so he was just as lost as they probably were listening to him.

The Maori chieftain, the one with whom the Xiaolin monks had been speaking, pushed his way through the crowd abruptly and stared hard at the pale youth before saying something, as well.

Jack blinked at the strange words and frowned, slowly shaking his head to indicate that he didn't understand.

The chief conceded to repeat the sequence of sounds and syllables, this time using hand gestures to aid the point he was trying to convey. The man's hands made motions to his face, where ink was carved into his flesh in thick, banded patterns that curved over his eyebrows and beneath his eyes as well as on his nose and around his mouth.

Jack looked around as he realized that the chief was not the only one with such markings. Indeed, most of the men bore similar tattoos upon their faces as well as their stomachs, bare thighs, and calves; of course, not all of them at once, and some men only had facial tattoos or only thigh tattoos, but it was clear that it was something common amongst the peoples. Even the women were marked with ink, but amongst the females, the tattoos appeared to be restricted to the lips and chin.

The goth was slow to realize the gist of the chieftain's words. The most he could figure was that the man was inquiring about those markings; perhaps why he didn't have them…?

Jack wasn't quite sure how to respond, but any response he could've given would've been cut off as the dark-skinned man reached out and touched his left cheek. The genius squeaked again and backed up, staring with wide eyes at the chieftain. Said man was gawking at his fingers in surprise, now smeared with black.

Oh, Jack realized, his eyeliner…he'd forgotten he was even wearing it! That was probably what they were confused about.

He was not at all prepared for what came with the revelation that it was mere makeup he was wearing and not tattoos like the Maori had.

The people crowding around him, particularly the women, gave an ear-piercing noise of glee and pounced on him, squealing the unfamiliar word, "Patupairehe!"

Jack yelped as he was tackled to the ground and groped at by a plethora of hands. He struggled to free himself from the knot of people, but thoroughly failed and ended up in the embrace of at least twenty women that touched him all over. Hands skimmed through his red hair followed by coos of interest, his chin was caught and pulled this way and that so as to allow the natives to peer at his equally red eyes, and the goth couldn't help but sputter wordlessly as they figured out the latch of his helipack and the zipper of his trench coat and peeled both off of him.

Jack feared for a moment that these women had very unwelcome sexual intentions for him, but those fears were (slightly) eased when they did not next go for his pants or try to remove any other clothing. Instead, they ran their hands over his bare, white arms, marveling at the contrast between their own dusky skin and his pallid complexion.

Jack shivered hard and reinitiated his struggles, this time managing to break away just a bit; enough to stand.

"Okay," he spoke shakily, "I dunno _what_ the hell is going on here, but…no, okay? Just…no!"

The women stood as well and trotted back over to him, all oblivious smiles and bedroom eyes. The Maori men watched with interest, some obviously upset by the behavior of their spouses or daughters or whatever the relation happened to be, but they pointedly did not interfere. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw the monks watching and giggling to themselves at his plight instead of, oh, say, _helping_ like good guys were _supposed_ to do.

Jack scowled, abruptly annoyed and angry with the whole situation. He scanned the area briefly, taking mental data of the layout of the village and the positioning of the people. The chief stood to his left, yet holding the Shen Gong Wu in the form of an erhu in his hand, and the females that'd become enamored of him were directly before him. The monks were off to his right, far enough away for this to work…

In a daring and risky move, the goth darted over to the chief, plucking his helipack from the ground on the way there and taking advantage of the fact that the man had not been expecting it to snatch the Wu right out of his hands. The women moved to follow him, as did the monks who had suddenly lost all sense of humor they'd had regarding the situation.

They would be too late.

Jack hastily put on and activated his helipack, quickly gaining enough altitude that Raimundo's blast of wind, meant to knock him off balance and send him crashing back to the ground, missed altogether.

"Who's got the Shen Gong Wu now?" he crowed victoriously, trying to sound every bit as confident as he didn't feel. "See ya', losers!"

With that, Jack turned and sped off into the sky for home, ignoring the angry cries of the monks and Maori men and the lamenting, pleading cries of the Maori women.

He shivered weakly, and not from the air's cold without his jacket to protect him. "_Weird…_" he muttered to himself.

By the time Jack got home and made it through his front door, he had worked himself up into a marvelous freak-out.

He was within his rights, of course: he had just been forced to get to second base with a bunch of strange women before he'd even had the mental preparation of first, and all this with little to no prior experience with members of the opposite sex (or the same sex, for that matter). The goth had basically gone from the absolute minimum of social touching it was physically possible to have to the rock star treatment of being mobbed by females and _Christ,_ was it weird!

"JB-1640," he called to the nearest bot, not mustering the energy to care that his voice cracked on the last number, "get a hot shower running for me and set out some fresh clothes. I want a glass of chocolate milk and two- no, three pudding cups on my desk by the time I finish. Oh, and put in an order for a few more custom trench coats while you're at it; the way they get lost or ruined these days, I'll be totally out in a week."

Instead of instantly rushing off to obey its master, however, the robot inquired, "Are you feeling alright, master?"

"What…?" Jack mumbled. "I'm fine, why the hell are you asking?"

"Your physical status reads otherwise, sir," JB-1640 informed. "You heart rate's elevated, you appear to be suffering physiological tremors, and your facial expression is indicative of fear. Have you suffered any significant trauma recently, master?"

The genius immediately cursed his own decision to program his creations with a human-machine interaction function that allowed them to interpret little clues such as the ones JB-1640 had described in terms of emotion. "Fuck you," he growled unnecessarily at the robot. "How 'bout you quit bothering me do what I told you?"

In perfect, unquestioning obedience, the Jackbot dipped in a bow, intoning, "Of course, master," and zooming off to complete the tasks assigned it.

The goth mechanically stormed up the stairs to his room, running a frustrated hand through his hair and catching hold of his goggles as the motion dislodged them. He then carelessly tossed the protective eyewear onto his black silken bedspread. Most teenagers his age would _literally_ kill for a large lavish suite of a bedroom such as the one Jack had, but he hadn't the presence of mind to appreciate its loveliness at the moment.

Instead, he gave a brief glance to his windows, making sure the curtains were drawn before stripping off his sleeveless Frankenstein t-shirt and tossing it to the floor, kicking off his boots and unbuttoning his jeans as he made his way over to the adjoined bathroom where he could already hear the water running.

By the time Jack made it through the door, he was down to his underwear and, perhaps out of some lingering sense of paranoia, he shut and locked the door before peeling those off, as well.

The water of the shower was blissfully hot as he stepped in, practically scalding his snow-white flesh a bright coral color the moment it touched him. The goth reveled in the pleasant burn for a few moments before finding the shampoo and scrubbing it into his hair thoroughly.

If there was one thing Jack hated, it was dirty hair and what with the dusty and unsanitized hands of Maori natives that'd been in it fairly recently, the youth couldn't help but feel it warranted a good cleaning today.

With a quick rinse to remove the bubbly suds left behind by the hair care product, Jack simply stood under the hot stream of water for several long, long minutes, imagining on some deep, subconscious level that it was washing away the freakiness of the event that had happened mere hours ago.

It wasn't really working, but he enjoyed trying it, anyway.

When Jack finally emerged from the bathroom, steam following behind his freshly toweled body, all the items he had asked for were waiting for him. He took the clothing that'd been laid out on his bed and dressed himself before meandering over to his desk.

Jack plopped down unenthusiastically into his chair and grabbed his chocolate milk in one hand and the remote to his giant plasma screen television in the other. His mind was racing as he turned on what appeared to be a soap opera and took a swig of his beverage, trying desperately to make sense of what'd gone on in New Zealand.

It just…it _didn't_ make sense! He was ignored by others all of his life regardless of what country he was in, and then all of a sudden, a bunch of nutty Maori women just…just _mob_ him like that? It was _weird!_ Why were they so interested in him? Why were they all crazy-excited over him? _What the hell kind of appeal did he have to those people?_

It was only when the theme for the next daytime television show began playing that Jack realized he had lost himself in thought for about an hour and finished off all three pudding cups in the same amount of time.

He shook his head and stood from his chair just to get _up._ This couldn't keep going on, he knew. If it did, he'd probably never get anything done again.

But what the fuck was he supposed to do?

He began thinking of the word they had called him, over and over. _Patupairehe_. What did it _mean?_

Quick! To the Googlemobile!

Jack strode over to his desk. Dropping into the chair, he quickly accessed Google and, from there, went to Wikipedia – otherwise known as "Info God."

He read the three sentences Wikipedia had on the subject and sighed roughly even as he ran his hands through his hair, tangling the vibrant red-orange strands.

"Fairies? _Really?_ Y'know, Wiki, I thought you were up on the times," he groused. "We prefer to be called 'gay' these days."

Pouting, Jack got up and paced; no wiser than he was before. He threw a glare over his shoulder at his innocent computer. "I'm not even _from_ New Zealand!"

Abruptly, he went stone still. No, _he_ wasn't from New Zealand.

But his Grandpa Spicer had been.

He didn't have many memories of the old man. He only knew that Heketoro Spicer had been colored the same as he was; the only difference between them had been their eyes. His were crimson while his grandfather's had been dark blue.

Heketoro had been the love of Jack's grandmother's life. The vicious old woman only ever seemed to soften around him, but Heketoro had always seemed to vanish when Jack had gone to visit his grandparents.

Memory filled Jack's mind - so strong that it was as if he were re-living the moment over again. He'd been five and it had been the last day he'd ever seen his grandfather. He'd gone looking for the old man while his grandmother was preoccupied; involved in a shouting match with some old frienemy over the telephone. He'd found Heketoro in a private den in the attic, writing in a thick book... a journal. Heketoro had noticed him, of course. He'd locked away the journal and Jack remembered making note of that because he'd planned to come back later and pick the lock to see what his grandpa had been writing. At that moment, however, he'd allowed Heketoro to pick him up and carry him away to play some sort of silly nonsense game.

Jack had been worn out from playing all day and had been put down for a nap. When he'd woken up again, his grandfather had vanished and the family had been in chaos.

He'd never gone back for that book.

Jack blinked as awareness of the here-and-now returned. He shook his head. He hadn't gone back for that book, no, but his grandmother _had_ to have known about its existence. If that was the case....

He roared for a Jackbot, and JB-1640 quickly zoomed up to him.

"What do you require, Master?" it asked of him.

"When Grandma died, her things came here, right?" Jack asked quickly.

"Yes, Master."

"Is all of her stuff still here?"

"Yes, Master."

"Where is it?"

"In the attic, Master. I wouldn't recommend going in there, though. There's some awfully big spiders up there."

Jack cringed. Dust and cobwebs and a mouse or two he could deal with. Spiders? 'Awfully _big_' spiders? Fuck, no.

He described the book he needed and sent JB-1640 away to do the searching while he paced again, jittery with nerves.

A couple of hours later, JB-1640 returned and was promptly yelled at by Jack.

"What the _fuck_ took you so long?!" he bellowed, and threw a wrench at the robot's head.

JB-1640 bobbed out of the way. Its brass casing was covered in dust and cobwebs and, as Jack watched, a really big spider rappelled down from the ornamental edge of one shoulder. The robot noticed its master's terrified squeak, glanced down, and then hovered over the arachnid. A quick blast of propulsion and the eight-legged creature was a soot mark on the floor.

Jack grimaced. "Great. Now every spider in the house is going to come eat me in revenge."

"I will intercept them, Master. Here is the book you requested. It was in the seventeenth trunk."

"There's still that much stuff left up there? Huh. I'm surprised it wasn't sold off to fund some soiree or another," Jack muttered, and accepted the book.

Some strange symbol that Jack didn't recognize decorated the leather cover of the journal. Its pages were soft rag-pulp paper that tickled the skin of his fingertips as he stroked the book for a moment.

"Do you require anything else Master?"

"Nah. Get out and lemme read."

JB-1640 zoomed away, leaving Jack to his reading as ordered.

Jack flipped open the journal and winced at the protesting creak from the old leather spine. Carefully, he placed the journal on his desk, pushing his laptop out of the way first. Sitting down, he focused on the tiny, crabbed writing his grandfather had used. It was block print, like the way a child would write when first learning how.

_English is a difficult language. I would write in my language except that my language is made up of flute sound. Paper is not a good... it won't hold the music. I tried. No spell helped. Besides if anything happens to me then this book - Phyllis called it a diary - this book can be used as a source of knowledge for our son. I don't think Martin will have much to worry about though. He came out colored like his mother. The only thing we seem to share in common are the eyes. Even after he grew out of infancy, his eyes remained dark blue. Phyllis said human baby eyes change from birth blue to something else when they get older._

Goose-chills rippled over Jack's skin even as his eyes widened. Spell? _Human_ baby?

Bracing himself, Jack continued reading. He delved into the thoughts of Heketoro Spicer; a native of New Zealand, to be sure, but _not_ a human native. He read about Heketoro falling in lust, then in love, with Phyllis Wang; a half-American, half-Chinese woman who'd gone to New Zealand on vacation.

She'd come back with Heketoro in tow and already three months pregnant with their son.

Heketoro had left behind his tribe, but not willingly. They'd exiled him for mixing his blood with that of a human. It wasn't that Heketoro had taken a human lover; part of the patupairehe social structure meant regularly taking human lovers. It was that he'd made an infant with her and had refused to give her a drink that would make her void the baby. Patupairehe and human blood should not mix, but Heketoro found himself hard-pressed to win victories against Phyllis Wang. The woman could be sweet and loving, but she was capable of cruelty and evil if she felt crossed. Heketoro was in no mood to cross her about this.

The two of them had gone to China, where he'd learned to assimilate to a busy human industrial society. He'd tried to learn Chinese and simply could not. English was easier to speak; a bitch to write. He could function, though, and so he helped Phyllis take over her parents' spice company and they became the Spicers.

Their son had been born. Heketoro liked the boy well enough, but the two of them just couldn't seem to connect. That was fine; the less familial interaction they had, the less likely Martin's paternal inheritance would arise. Martin grew up, to all appearances a normal human being, and took a wife and got her pregnant.

Then, Jack arrived, white-skinned and red-haired and red-eyed, and Heketoro knew that trouble was coming. He knew, too, that his days of living in the human world were coming to a close. He couldn't stay, or else Jack would-

Jack blinked. He flipped the page, but it was blank. So were the others after that. He stared at the line where his grandfather had stopped writing; the point where his five-year-old grandson had interrupted him long ago.

"'Jack would' _what?!_ the albino genius yelled at the journal. "Damn it, old man! _What_ would I do?"

Angry, frustrated, frightened and confused, Jack picked up the journal and lunged out of his seat. With all of his strength, he hurled the journal at the nearest wall – which, unfortunately, was actually a window.

The glass balcony door shattered as the old, leather-bound book went through it. The journal hit the marble railing outside and burst apart. The wind and rain of the storm going on outside caught the rag-pulp paper and scattered the pages far and wide.

Jack stared at the mess he'd created, feeling the blood drain out of his face and nausea form a tight, huddling knot in his belly. A moment later, he screamed for his Jackbots and sent the small army of them that appeared out into the storm to gather up the remains of the journal.

He watched them work for a while, but knew it was pointless. Any information his grandfather had left in that journal, he hadn't found. Whatever it was, was too blithely mentioned for him to catch hold of and understand.

Sighing, he turned away and paced for a little bit, mulling over the information he _did_ have until one piece of it stunned him as the truth of it crystallized in his mind.

Wow.

The goth flopped onto his bed, staring sightlessly at the dark canopy above it as an ocean of thoughts swam around in his head.

So…he was a fairy. A…patupairehe, apparently, and he just as apparently looked like one. And yet, here he was, nineteen years into his life and only _just_ finding all this out through a bad experience and his grandpa's diary as opposed to some paranormal happening that came with the awakening of his long-dormant magical powers.

He was a fairy without magic, a human that didn't look it by any means whatsoever: the worst of _both_ worlds and what appeared to be a very obvious reason why he'd never seemed to fit in amongst the mortal crowd _or_ the magical crowd.

The youth thought about that for a moment, digesting it fully.

"Yeah," Jack grumbled to himself, throwing an arm over his eyes, "that sounds like my luck…"

**--**

**A/N: To those who read my journals on deviantART, you saw this coming. XD**

**For those who don't, there's a creature in Maori mythology called the "patupairehe," which describe Jack by about 90%. Of course, I just _had_ to write a fic about it!**

**It ended up being long enough to split into chapters for posting, and so that's what I'm doing.**

**As a side-note, the odds of such a primitive Maori settlement still existing in New Zealand is EXTREMELY unlikely, but hey: artistic license. XD  
**

**Anyways, thanks for reading, and I hope you guys like it! :D**

**P.S.- Thanks for your help with Chase and in writing that scene, Silv!**


	2. The Conundrum

**Mystic Roots**

**By: CrystallicSky**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Xiaolin Showdown or any of its characters, nor do I make any profit or attempt to with the writing of this or any of my other pieces.**

**Warnings: Language, homosexuality, some violence/gore later on, etc.**

**--**

It had taken quite awhile, but eventually, the shock and dismay of Jack's situation wore off.

Where most others would've balked at the information for _at least_ a few more days, it wasn't all that hard for someone who had awakened a ghost, witnessed telekinetic element-manipulation, seen a 1500+ year old man shape-shift into a dragon, and played with magical, reality-bending toys to accept that his lineage was partly magical in nature.

Well, at least the goth _figured_ it was the truth; either that, or somebody was _really_ good at fucking with him and his grandpa, the diary, and the Maori natives had all been part of some really elaborate set-up.

In any case, Jack's gut feeling on this was that the information his grandfather had indirectly given to him was correct and so he'd acted on it.

He had sent a handful of his robots to the massive private library of the Spicer mansion to search for information relating to fae-creatures, specifically the New Zealand native species that went by the title, 'patupairehe.'

Only one book had been found, and it had been delivered to Jack with utmost haste.

To Jack's dismay as he read the book-jacket and looked it over, it wasn't even solely a reference on his (probable) species, more of a text on fair-folk in general. If he was looking for a spectacularly in-depth fount of information, he was not about to find it here.

Still, he mused as he flipped through all of the pages he didn't care about to get to the chapter about Maori fae, it was a hell of a lot better than nothing.

Book opened to the appropriate section, Jack's eyes began scanning for any particular mention of the species he was looking for, bypassing things called marakihan, taniwha, ponaturi, and-

Jack froze. Right there, he pinpointed: 'patupairehe.'

The very first thing written about this particular species of fairy instantly dispelled all doubts Jack might've had that there was at least _some_ of it in his blood. After all, it was very hard for the goth to _not_ identify with beings that looked like 'tall, red-haired, exceedingly pale humans.'

Being part patupairehe would certainly explain why he'd been so contrastingly colored all his life, and why he'd always been about a head taller than all the other kids his age on any given year and currently towered in at an above-average 6'2".

In fact, the only physical feature of these fae that didn't seem to fit him was the tendency for dark eyes, anywhere from black to a deep blue. Still, Jack figured he could pass up that small detail with the explanation that his magical heritage was pretty watered down; about three-fourths human and making it incredibly likely the trait had just been phased out.

Interested, the goth continued to read about what were apparently his people and discovered that they dwelled in foggy and mountainous regions so as to avoid contact with humans and that, unlike Maori peoples, they were never tattooed. That would certainly explain the whole deal back at that Showdown: the villagers saw his coloring and identified him as a patupairehe, but were thrown off by his eyeliner when they'd mistaken it as a tattoo.

Reaching a paragraph about patupairehe abilities and weaknesses, Jack decided to start keeping track of how much of it applied to him as a fourthbreed.

"Heliophobic," he murmured aloud. The goth offered a glance around his rather dark, artificially-lit laboratory and decided it was somewhat true. He didn't particularly _like_ light, but he wasn't terrified of it.

Continuing to read, Jack next came across, "Pyrophobic?" The genius considered his track record with fire honestly and conceded that yeah, maybe that was accurate… Of course, he didn't really have a problem with fire so long as it wasn't an inch from his face, but he had what he deemed a moderate and healthy fear of the element.

'Disgusted by cooked foods' was the next weakness listed and the youth considered that as well. He wasn't _disgusted_ by them, he eventually decided, but he obviously had a history of clear preference for non-cooked items (or at least, that was the testament that a glance in the kitchen garbage can filled with candy wrappers and junk food bags would give).

The next sentence caused Jack to stop reading altogether as it declared patupairehe frightened of the color red.

This went in such direct opposition to all that he had garnered of his species so far that he couldn't help but murmur, "Scared of red? What the fu…We've got red hair, we wear red clothes, red flax and red eels are considered our property…and we're freaking _scared of red?_ What the hell kind of hypocritical bullshit…" He shook his head, deciding it wasn't important and that he should just keep reading.

There was only one weakness left: a strong aversion to red ochre.

Jack frowned. Red ochre? What the hell was that? He turned to a nearby bot and asked nearly the same question.

The robot called upon its databanks of information, and provided its master with, "Red ochre is a mixture of hematite earth and shark oil, sir."

The goth hummed to himself, still frowning in confusion. "I don't _think_ I'm averse to that…" he muttered before ordering, "Go get some of this red ochre stuff for me, JB-730. I have to test this."

"Of course, master," JB-730 conceded before leaving the lab to perform its given task.

With him gone, Jack decided to move on in the chapter while he was able.

After all, this was about the part where the 'weaknesses and abilities' got into more of the 'abilities.'

"Patupairehe have the power to call down fogs and mists so as to hide themselves from mortals," he read aloud. He thought about many, many times in both his youth and adolescence that he had wanted to make himself invisible and had actively tried to make that happen.

Jack decided very definitively that he did not have this power.

He kept reading and discovered that patupairehe considered themselves guardians of whatever forest they lived in and were apt at using their magic to protect it.

Having been raised in an urban jungle; or rather, _various_ urban jungles since he was young, the goth acknowledged that this didn't apply to him, either, as he had no forest to protect and therefore no deep, meaningful cause for which to be able to use that type of magic.

Before he could keep going, JB-730 returned carrying a concoction of what Jack could only assume was red ochre.

"Here you are, master," it intoned, placing the container upon the lab table and opening it.

Instantly, Jack's nose stung from the pungent scent of the stuff, the sting moving alarmingly quickly to his lungs with every breath he inhaled. His head swam oddly and he began to feel dizzy just being in the _proximity_ of the mixture of earth and oil.

He gagged and came back to himself as a distinct sense of nausea began to rise in him, providing him with the sense to hurriedly cover his nose with his sleeve and reel backwards in his chair.

"Oh, _god,_" he coughed out, "that shit is _foul!_ Somebody get it out of here before I puke, seriously!"

The Jackbot did as it was instructed and hurriedly took the offending substance from the room to dispose of it, leaving its master to hack raggedly for a few moments, breathing deeply.

"Damn…" Jack mumbled under his breath, voice somewhat hoarse, "okay…note to self: red ochre very bad. Avoid that shit like the plague."

The youth took a few moments to steady his heartbeat and even his breathing before conceding to pick up the book again, and when he did, he found himself severely disappointed that there was only one fae-ability he had not yet read about.

Actually reading it was even _more_ disappointing.

"Seduce women with flute playing?" he practically demanded of the reference tome. "What the hell, that's _it_?"

Jack had been hoping for something a little…well, cooler, and all he got was the ability to (potentially) arouse members of the opposite sex? _That_ sucked! He wasn't even _attracted_ to members of the opposite sex! What use was _that_ crap?

He imagined that the type of magic patupairehe used in protection of their forests was _plenty_ awesome but that, because of circumstances, he was unable to use whatever of it he had, and the thought only made the youth further annoyed.

"That sucks," he declared aloud, slamming the book shut. There was nothing left to read there, anyways. "I get _all_ of the patupairehe weaknesses and _none_ of the magic? Fuck!"

JB-730, who had already returned from disposing of the red ochre, watched as its creator angrily folded his arms over his chest; looking ready to enter into a fantastic pout.

"Master," the robot spoke up, "I have a suggestion, if you haven't already thought of it yourself."

Jack ignored the programmed ass-kissing and demanded, "Yeah, what?"

"It's unlikely that whatever mystical powers you have inherited from your grandfather are nonexistent," JB-730 said. "Rather, they are, or should be, dormant. You cannot use them not because you don't _have_ the magic, but because you don't know how to use it properly. May I suggest seeking out a teacher?"

Jack snorted in derision. "Yeah, great idea," he said sarcastically. "And who would that be? Grandpa's missing or dead, so I can't go to the source of it, and Dad never used his magic ever, so he wouldn't be able to teach me anything about it. He probably doesn't even _have_ his magic anymore! As for other patupairehe, I'd have a hell of a time with that. The odds that I'd even _find_ a settlement are astronomical alone, but when you factor in the odds of finding someone there willing to teach somebody who's not even a halfbreed, but a _fourth_breed…" Jack shook his head. "I'd probably have better luck trying to find answers in grandpa's journal, again!" It went unsaid how impossible that would likely be with the pages water-soaked and jumbled: that was the point.

"I was suggesting simply searching for someone versed in the ways of magic," the youth's robot corrected. "It may not be as effective as learning from one of your kind, but in your own words, master, it would be 'better than nothing.'"

Jack sighed. "I guess so," he conceded. "But still, who could I get to teach me? The monks aren't likely to help me figure out my powers so I can turn around and use 'em against them. In fact, it'd be _just_ their modus operandi to find out what I am and take advantage of it before I could even retaliate."

"Then perhaps someone Heylin, sir?"

"Same thing," the fourthbreed fae morosely noted. "I really don't want to get mixed up with Hannibal Bean, either. That's…that's just a road I don't really want to go down, and Wuya's a total bitch _and_ she doesn't have her magic at the moment, so she's about as useless as any random person I could ask off the street."

"You're forgetting someone, master," JB-730 reminded.

Jack glanced over to his machine, giving it an expectant look.

"What of Chase Young?"

The goth froze, his eyes going wide. "Oh, no…" he muttered. "Chase wouldn't…I mean, he can use magic, but he wouldn't want to… It'd be a waste of time to even… I _shouldn't_ even…"

"Pardon me for interrupting," the automaton said dully, "but you haven't much other choice. Unless, of course, you have no problems with allowing your magic to dwindle in the manner of your father's."

If Jack hadn't already been tense from the mention of the Heylin dragonlord that quite soundly seemed to hate his guts, he tensed even further at that little lurking threat.

JB-730 was right. From what he'd picked up about magic over his years in the Shen Gong Wu conflict, it was a use it or lose it kind of deal, and the youth hadn't been using his for almost two decades, now.

The odds were good that if he didn't do something with it soon, he wasn't going to have it anymore.

He _really_ didn't want that. For _years,_ he had been getting taken to the cleaners by his enemies on the Xiaolin and Heylin sides all because his body had always been too delicate for physical combat (at least he now knew why) and he had never had his own magic to rely on unlike _everybody else he went up against._

Now, he had a golden opportunity in front of him: he actually _did_ have his own magic and now it was just of matter of getting someone to help him figure it out.

Chase, no matter _how_ unlikely a candidate for teaching him, was looking to be his only option.

Jack sighed, massaging his temples for a moment in frustrated tension. "…Fine," he said eventually, standing from his desk with a firm determination. "Somebody get me my coat."

**--**

**A/N: Chapter Two of Mystic Roots! ^^**

Thanks for reading, and I hope you guys like it! :D


	3. The Teacher

**Mystic Roots**

**By: CrystallicSky**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Xiaolin Showdown or any of its characters, nor do I make any profit or attempt to with the writing of this or any of my other pieces.**

**Warnings: Language, homosexuality, some violence/gore later on, etc.**

**--**

Jack was so nervous at the moment that he feared his heart might burst out of his chest.

He had been in such a hurry to get this meeting over with that he had neglected several of his trademark rituals in getting ready. Currently, he was without eyeliner and had forgotten his goggles at home. What's more, the robot that had brought him his jacket had interpreted 'coat' to mean one of his more normal coat-coats as opposed to his beloved trench. It was black, at least, but that wasn't much comfort to the youth.

Here he was in the grand foyer of Chase Young's palace, feeling not only naked but utterly _inferior_ to the gorgeous and all-powerful being that stared him down from on high.

Under the cold, hard gaze of the wicked dragonlord, Jack quietly decided that coming here was almost _certainly_ mistake: there was no _way_ this would work.

To Chase Young's surprise, he found himself nearly on eye-level with Jack Spicer.

He'd arrived on the central dais as he usually did; descended down the imposing line of marble steps as he usually did. He stopped on his usual step - third one from the floor.

And yet, Spicer was nearly on level with him.

Hiding his annoyance at the realization that the weak youth was now several inches taller than he, Chase looked coldly at the white-skinned young man and asked, "Why did you come here, Spicer?"

Jack visibly jumped, not having expected to be addressed. "W-well," he began shakily, nerves evident in his tone, "I just came to ask...well, I wanted to see if...I was thinking maybe-"

"Despite my immortal status, Spicer, I really _do not_ have all day for this," the dragonlord said, his voice as ice-cold as his gaze. "What do you _want?_"

The youth swallowed hard and forced himself to take a deep breath. The sooner he asked what he had to ask and was rejected, the sooner he could run home and pretend he'd never come here against his better judgment in the first place.

"This is gonna sound like a really stupid question," Jack said, "but...you know about magic, right?"

One eyebrow went up in a gesture heavy with sarcasm.

"You are correct, Spicer," Chase replied, his voice disdainful. "That _is_ a stupid question."

Jack winced, flinching back. "You're right," he agreed instantly. "I...I shouldn't have...I'll...just get out of your hair and leave you alone. S-sorry for bugging you..." The goth then essentially turned tail and ran in an attempt to leave the mountain palace before Chase decided that this waste of his time was worth killing him over.

Instantly, Chase stood in front of the open door; teleporting neatly to block Jack. He stood with his arms behind his back, his spine perfectly straight, his head held high. He looked at the young man that had skittered to a stop before him, his neck cricked back just slightly to allow for Spicer's greater height.

"_I_ will tell you when you may leave," he said calmly. "Now... why are you asking me such a ridiculous question?"

Jack shivered at the tone, sounding to him as the dangerous calm before the storm. "It's...nothing," he quietly lied, "don't worry about it."

Chase brought his right hand forward, raising it so Jack could see it. He snapped his fingers and the heavy rock doors slammed shut quickly.

The genius meeped in fear at the _very_ clear gesture. "I kinda sorta maybe might have some magic but I don't know how to use it and I thought you might be able to help me!" he confessed immediately.

Chase's lip curled. "Magic? _You?_ Spicer, so far as any of us know, you are magically 'dead'."

"But I do!" Jack protested. "I mean, I should... I only just found out about it so it's probably faded, and I'm mostly human so it's probably diluted, but I should still have _some_ magic! My grandpa was a fairy, for god's sakes!" The youth paused, considering the way that'd sounded. "A real fairy," he amended, "not gay."

"Oh, _really_," the Heylin lord replied, laughing mockingly. "Was he Tinkerbell's brother, perchance?"

The goth flushed in an odd combination of embarrassment and indignation. "H-hey," he demanded, "shut up, I'm serious!" He had only found out about the matter a short time ago, but the connection Jack felt with his race was undoubtedly there. "I'm one-fourth patupairehe, dammit!" he declared.

Chase Young went completely still, the sneer and any trace of mocking amusement falling away.

After a few moments, he moved closer to Jack, who shied away nervously. At the dragonlord's order to remain still, the albino genius did so, but shivered continuously as Chase inspected him _closely_.

"Patupairehe..." the Heylin sorcerer muttered. He reached up and caught hold of Jack's chin, turning the younger man's head easily to the right and then the left. "Your skin _has_ always been very pale...."

He pulled his hand away and looked at his glove with some surprise to see it unmarred by any other color. He lifted an eyebrow as he asked, "That is not make-up on your face?"

"N-no..." Jack shakily denied. "I was born like this..."

Chase lifted his hand; sank it into the thick, soft mass of Jack's hair and stroked it back, away from the younger man's face as he looked closely at the roots. "Your hair... this is your natural color? It isn't chemically applied?"

"No," the goth repeated, his voice coming out stronger than before, but an involuntary shiver coursing his spine. "I've tried dying it other colors, but it never lasted more than a couple of days."

Chase moved the one hand from Jack's hair to his left cheek. His other hand came up to press against Jack's right cheek, and he held the young man's head steady. The heat from his hands melted through Jack's face, chasing away the mountain chill as gold eyes looked into his own crimson orbs from only a couple of inches away.

"Patupairehe," Chase said quietly, "are meant to have _dark_ eyes; anywhere from black to mud-brown to dark blue. How did you wind up with eyes as red as blood?"

Jack closed his eyes and looked away, beginning to feel _much_ too lightheaded from that dragon's stare than he would've liked. "Fuck if I know," he admitted. "But, I told you I'm diluted. I'm still three-fourths human, so maybe...?"

Chase was silent for a few moments; considering the information given to him while his thumbs stroked slowly over the smooth white skin beneath Jack's red eyes. The little fingers on both hands, tucked against Jack's neck, flexed and then curled just a bit to slide ever-so-lightly against the younger man's most sensitive skin.

"I choose to believe you," the dragonlord said, and turned away; his hands sliding from Jack's face, the fingers skating in a fleeting caress over that smooth-smooth pale skin.

Jack let out a breath he hadn't known he been holding. "...r-really?" he asked, needing the reassurance that those were the words Chase had just spoken.

Chase lifted his hand and snapped his fingers. A moment later, the two of them reappeared in the Heylin lord's ornate throne room.

"Yes," Young said, walking elegantly over to his throne and seating himself on it. He crossed one leg over the other at the knee, steepled his fingers, and regarded Jack intently. "You being one-fourth patupairehe would certainly explain _how_ you survive Showdowns against the monks - or anyone else. It also explains why you can keep your mind coherent for as long as you do when using the Monkey Staff. Then, too, there's your ability to use Shen-Gong-Wu at all. They will not work for the average person; a failsafe the master monks devised when they created new 'Wu."

Jack shook his head. "Whoa, wait. How do you explain Jermaine, then? And Katnappé? And Tubbimura?"

"A person must have a certain amount of supernatural or paranormal ability in order to tap into the magical essence of a Shen-Gong-Wu. The nature of the monks' magical toys is such that anyone with such gifts is drawn to the contest of acquiring the devices. Jermaine is not fully aware of it, but he has the potential to be a telekinetic. Katnappé, naturally, has very strong ESP. Tubbimura... I am not certain, but there _is_ something there."

"That's weird," Jack muttered to himself. "Does that mean...you'll help me, though?"

Chase lifted an eyebrow. "Help you with _what_, precisely?"

"Er...figuring out my magic," the youth clarified. "I'm not a full-blooded fairy or anything, but…I figure I have to have a _little_ of it, at least. And y'know...it's not like there's anybody _else_ who can or will teach me, so I thought you might..."

"Not even your half-breed father?"

Jack winced but bitterly explained, "He's never around for me to ask about it, and even if he were, he'd be useless to me. He's a half-breed, but he's never used his magic before or even _tried_ to, so-"

"It's left him," Chase murmured understandingly, shifting his hands apart. He rested his cheek against the knuckles of one hand as he considered the young man before him who looked suddenly miserable.

"I...really don't want that to happen to me," Jack confessed quietly. "I've never used whatever magic I've got, but that doesn't mean I don't _want_ to. I just..." he sighed. "I just really, really, _really_ don't want to lose something I've never gotten a chance to try."

Abruptly, Chase stood and took the few steps forward that brought him to where Jack stood. Reaching out, he placed his right hand firmly against Jack's chest, directly over the heart.

The youth started at the contact and glanced down at the warlord. "Um...what are you-" He cut himself off as a strange tingling feeling took root where Chase's hand rested; the feeling of long-unused mystical energy being stirred up by the older man's own.

Chase, too, was staring at his hand resting on Jack's chest. "Your magic is still within you," he said, his voice quiet, low. "It has not yet withered away completely. Had you waited much longer - perhaps even six months - it would have been lost to you. There is not much there; you will never be as strong as myself or even the monks, but I can help you harness it. I can train you to use it."

Jack hadn't known he was _capable_ of feeling the amount of relief he felt at that moment. He still had it! It wasn't gone forever! There was _hope_! "Y...you will? That's...oh, my god, that's great! Thank you, I-..." The youth paused as he remembered it was Chase Young he was speaking to: the Heylin man did _not_ simply do favors. "What do you want from me in exchange?" the goth demanded warily.

Chase gave the younger man a shark smile: full of teeth.

"Clever of you to know I would not do this without benefit to myself," he complimented. Lifting his hand away from Jack's chest, he tucked it behind his back. "Swear to never use your magic against me for purposes of malice or betrayal. Swear that you will never disobey me or put me at a disadvantage that would leave me critically or fatally vulnerable. Swear your loyalty to _me_, Jack Spicer, and I swear to you that I _will_ teach you to use your magic."

Uncertain, Jack considered his options for a brief moment. Was learning his magic worth it? Was he willing to put himself in so susceptible a position should anything ever go awry and Chase turned on him? Was there anyone else who could teach him or was Chase really his only choice?

Seeing the young man's hesitation, Chase said quickly, "This is a one-time offer, Spicer. Turn me down now, and I will send you home instantly. You will not see me again until it is too late; until the time when your magic's ability to be revived has passed."

That settled it instantly.

"I'll do it," Jack promised. "I'll give you my loyalty and all of the other things you said, just..." His voice dropped a tone in desperation and he begged, "...just help me..."

Chase gave that shark-smile again as he took Jack's hand in his own. They shook, their magic binding them to their agreement.

"I'm glad you see things my way, fourth-blood," the Heylin lord murmured.

Jack smiled just a bit.

**--**

**A/N: Chapter Three of Mystic Roots! ^^**

**Thanks for reading, and I hope you guys like it! :D**


	4. The Lesson

**Mystic Roots**

**By: CrystallicSky**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Xiaolin Showdown or any of its characters, nor do I make any profit or attempt to with the writing of this or any of my other pieces.**

**Warnings: Language, homosexuality, some violence/gore later on, etc.**

**--**

Chase stood at the side of Jack Spicer's bed, looking down at the slumbering youth.

That he was standing in Jack's bedroom in the Spicer Mansion was beside the point.

Currently, he was looking at a young man who was sleeping with his chest and stomach on the mattress, one arm tucked under him. The other arm was wrapped around the back of his head and aligned along the top, with the palm facing up. Spicer's left hip was resting on the mattress, with his right hip canted backwards and his legs scissored apart as if he'd been running.

He was also snoring; a harsh, guttural, grating sound that had a phlegmy rattle. Beard stubble had darkened the skin of his face from the nose and earlobes down.

Chase grimaced. "Sloppy..." Reaching down, he caught hold of the sheet that was wrapped around Jack's waist and _yanked_. "_Up_, Spicer!"

Jack was awake in an instant as he hit the floor with a painful thud and the startled screech of, "Fuck!"

It took a bleary moment of consciousness to even semi-realize the situation: that he had been quite unceremoniously turned out of bed and that a certain Heylin warrior was standing above him.

"Chase...?" he inquired in a half-tired slur. "What are you doing in my room at..." he paused to glance at the clock upon his bedside table, "5:00 AM?!"

Chase lifted an eyebrow. "What _I_ would like to know is why you returned _here_."

"...what d'you mean why?" Jack demanded. "I _live_ here."

"Not any longer. I am teaching you, now. You are my _student_. You must be in close quarters with me so we may work whenever we must, no matter what hour of the day."

"You want me to _move in_? Right _now_?" The goth glanced around the room, finally making the effort to actually stand. "It's 5:00 AM," he protested. "I haven't showered or shaved or packed or anything!"

Chase rolled his eyes. "You seem to think it's a big deal for someone who has _magic_ to move a few items, Spicer."

Jack winced at the subtle jab at his necessity of relying on the man in such matters. "Okay," he conceded, "so, packing's not an issue. What about the rest of it? Can I get ten minutes to take care of the essentials, or are you gonna willingly deal with my morning breath and scruffy, homeless drifter visage all day?"

Chase hesitated. He looked Jack over slowly, very thoroughly. The young man was wearing black boxers with skull-'n'-crossbones all over them, and a black tank top with the words "I FEEL A SIN COMING ON" decorated with devil horns and a tail from various letters. Despite the inane clothing, it covered a long, lean body.

Gold eyes met crimson eyes; sarcasm and something else in the glittering yellow orbs.

"Your appearance is fine, though I will admit I do not want you reeking of unwashed monkey. Bathe. Dress. Then, we go."

Jack snorted at the comparison. "Thanks," he offered, heading for the bathroom.

While there, he kept his stay quick; shortening his usual routine considerably by only staying in the shower long enough to get clean and lingering by the sink for but a few minutes to brush his teeth and shave off his five o'clock shadow.

Emerging from his bathroom moments later, a fluffy black towel knotted around his waist, the fourth-fae paused to see Chase hovering around his desk, viewing something with a mix of puzzlement and interest.

"What're you doing?" Jack asked, curious as to what of his could _possibly_ be of interest to the dragonlord.

Chase reached down, but hesitated to touch. He was looking at what appeared to be a domed, magnetic sculpture with metallic liquid pooled at the bottom. "What is this?"

Catching sight of the object in question the genius grinned and wandered over. "Oh, this is awesome," he assured. "It's something I've been messing with a little bit recently called ferrofluid. It's got some useful applications in machines and robotics, but it's fun to screw around with, too, because of how it reacts with varying degrees of magnetism. In fact...let me show you."

Jack reached out to the bottom of the enclosed sculpture where a small, unassuming knob lay. He twisted it and carefully watched Chase's reaction.

Chase's eyes widened. Abruptly, the liquid metal began whirling, like clay on a potter's wheel. It began forming different shapes that flowed from one form to the other. Tiny spikes shot out and then began whirling in counter-opposite rows and circles as a cone of the metal fluid rose up from the center of the sculpture. Spicer twisted the knob again, a teeny-tiny bit, and the spikes withdrew into the cone for a moment, and then abruptly burst from the top and danced around each other. With each twist of the knob that Spicer gave, a new dance of the liquid metal took place; a small, contained ballet of the element.

"This is... amazing," the Heylin lord said quietly. He glanced at Spicer. "Did you discover this?"

"No," Jack denied, "but I do like messing around with it. There are the boring, practical applications for ferrofluids, and then there's this. I like this." He switched the knob to the off-position, watching as the hundreds of little spikes at the top of the sculpture began melting until the shape was distinctly lotus-like in nature and the dark, metallic petals began dripping off one by one.

"It's fun to play with," he said. "It's...beautiful and it looks totally random and unpredictable, but it's still perfectly controlled with just a twitch of that knob."

The goth abruptly realized he was still clothed in only a towel and very nearly blushed, turning away from both his desk and the warlord. "Lemme just put on some clothes and we can go."

Chase gave a wolfish grin. "Don't hurry on my account, Spicer."

Jack's step faltered briefly, think he'd heard something...interested in that tone...

But, no, that couldn't be it. Chase was probably just teasing him.

Deciding not to be teased, the youth threw open his closet and picked out of a few items of clothing to wear. Then, unabashedly, he dropped his towel to the floor and began dressing.

Chase smirked. He knew bravado when he saw it.

Crossing his legs at the ankle and his arms over his chest, Chase leaned against the desk and watched Jack get dressed.

"You could do with some muscle definition, Spicer," he opined. "While the basic form of you is aesthetically pleasing, you are little more than a stringy piece of meat."

"Sorry," the goth shot back, "nobody ever bothered to help me learn that stuff. Or anything, for that matter." He bent over to pull on a fresh pair of boxers, pointing out, "On both sides, you guys mock me for sucking as bad as I do, but nobody ever tried to do anything about it. I've pretty much been on my own from Day One."

Chase tilted his head to get a better view. "On second thought, Spicer... your definition appears to be _just_ fine."

Jack purposefully ignored the statement and put on a comfortable pair of black jeans, as well, before reaching further into his closet and deciding on a slim-fitting t-shirt (also black, of course). He eventually determined that he would leave his trench coat off and snatched his goggles from his bedside table so as to sling them around his neck.

This done, he turned to the waiting warlord and inquired, "Are we going, or what?"

Chase grinned; a sharp-toothed smirk. "By all means."

A snap of green-gloved fingers, and the two of them vanished from the Spicer mansion.

Several moments later, they sat in preparation of beginning the necessary training.

Chase had landed them in his throne room. After assuring Jack that his things were neatly stored elsewhere, Chase ordered the younger man to sit down on the floor for meditation purposes.

"But _why?_" Jack whined. Sitting on cold, hard rock...? _Ack_. Why not a comfy chair?

"Because, Spicer, if you're going to get _anywhere_ with rejuvenating your powers, you must meditate," Chase replied, exasperation beginning to turn his tone acidic.

"Can't I just...wing it?" he asked. "How come I have to _meditate_?"

Chase narrowed one eye slightly. It was an expression that suggested madness.

"You must learn to let go your conscious mind so that your instincts may gain strength. In your instincts lays your magic, for naturally, it _wants_ to be used. As a novice, you must let your magic take the lead. Once you recognize it and learn the feel of it, you may begin taming it to _your_ will. But, first, the rise of your instincts. So, if it's quite alright with you...?"

Jack sighed and frowned, but offered no further protest. "Okay," he said, "you're the expert here. What am I supposed to do?"

"We will start with the absolute basics: steady your breathing and focus on it. Allow all other thoughts to dissolve away save for those regarding your intake and exhalation of air."

The goth sat cross-legged upon the ground and instinctively closed his eyes so as to shut out any visual distractions. He set his mind to the task of doing as Chase had instructed and brought his attention to the sound and feel of his own breath.

This worked for all of a few seconds.

Listening, Jack realized his breathing was sounding a mite wheezy. God, he hoped his asthma wasn't acting up. He hadn't used an inhaler in six years; he didn't want to start up again _now,_ of all times.

Then again, he could be getting sick. That'd suck. Or maybe he wasn't _getting_ sick, maybe he'd been _made_ sick. The genius wouldn't put such a thing past Katnappé, not at _all._

God, could Katnappé be any _more_ of a bitch? Seriously, she was _the_ biggest twat Jack had ever met outside of Wuya.

And speaking of Wuya, where the hell was she at? Probably getting it on with Hannibal. Gross. Then again, those viney tentacle-thingies probably made for some interesting bed play; kinky witch was probably into that kinda thing.

That reminded Jack: what'd ever happened to that robot he was building, like, a year ago? It was really badass. It had those metallic tentacles coming out of it that had the strength of twenty men. That would _definitely_ whoop some Xiaolin ass if he could just remember-

Oh, yeah. The monks pretty much blew up his lab while he was building the damn thing and it got incinerated. Fuck.

God, were those Xiaolin monks assholes. Didn't they realize that they weren't _supposed_ to go blowing up shit for no good reason, in enemy possession or not? Fuck…when he figured out this whole magic thing, the _first_ thing he was gonna do was-…

Oh…he was supposed to be focusing on his breathing right now, wasn't he?

…damn….

Jack sighed aloud and opened his eyes in a subtle gesture of surrender.

"Yeah, this isn't working," he said to Chase. "Sorry…"

Chase opened his own eyes. He had been sitting in meditation across from Jack. He scowled at the younger man. "Spicer, you will _never_ succeed if you do not want this badly enough to even _attempt_ meditation."

"I _do_ want it!" the goth protested immediately. "What, do you think I'm just blowing smoke out of my ass, here? Do you think I fucking swore my loyalty to you for kicks? I _want_ this, Chase," he assured, scowling darkly. "I _want_ to not suck at something useful for once in my life! I _want_ to be able to stop having my ass handed to me in Showdowns just because my robots can't even hope to match up against fucking _magic_! I _want_ this, Chase, so…so don't even _think_ I don't, okay?!" Jack was positively _glaring_ by the time he finished speaking, his breathing heavy.

Chase blinked; breathed out slow, and then grinned. "Very passionate, Spicer. Now, for a moment, might I direct your attention to your hands...?"

The youth's brow furrowed in confusion. He glanced downwards even as he began asking, "What-..." His eyes widened almost comically at what he saw and he stopped speaking entirely.

His hands, _his_ hands!, were glowing with a sheen of mystical energy that warped the air around them, blood-red sparks crackling erratically off of his clenched fists.

Jack had just tapped into his magic for the first time _ever._

"H...holy _fuck,_" he muttered weakly.

Satisfaction was very evident on the dragonlord's face as he said, "We have found the conduit for your power. Calm acceptance or searching is not your way, Spicer. Intense want - _greed_. If you want it so bad you ache for it; if you feel you must have it or _die_, then your magic comes to you."

Jack knew there was an insult to his character in there somewhere, but he didn't much care right now.

He had just done something no ordinary human could ever do; _him!_ Weak, klutzy, underdog Jack Spicer had just made his fucking hands _glow and spark_ because he'd so badly wanted to.

_Awesome..._

"I guess," he agreed with Chase's statement, his lingering awe obvious in his tone and actions as he continued to stare at his pale palms and fingers. A thought came to him, then, and he asked, "What now? I mean…I found my magic, I guess, but…where do we go from here?"

"Now, we work on making _that_--" Chase gestured at Jack's glowing hands. "--happen _intentionally_, on command, whenever you need or want it."

Jack frowned, doubt beginning to express itself on his face.

Chase sighed. "Practice, you ninny."

"Oh!" the goth realized. "Okay, yeah...that's worth a shot, I guess." Jack took a deep breath and attempted to repeat the small show of magic.

At first, nothing came and the youth was nervous that the first happening had only been a fluke. He forced himself to relax and remembered how the first time only moments before had happened. His magic had come into play because he'd _wanted_ it to, because he had been feeling at the moment that he absolutely _needed_ it to work and refused to settle for anything less than that.

Jack tried the same here. He explained to himself logically that he _needed_ to tap into his magic again. If he didn't, he never be able to learn how to use it, and if he didn't learn to use it, he'd lose it completely, and if he lost it completely, he'd turn out _just_ like his asshole father and no, no, no, no, _NO._ He didn't _want_ to let that happen; he didn't _want_ to go that route; he _wanted_ to learn this; he _wanted_ to be skilled at something outside the spectrum of mathematics and science; he _wanted_ to be good at something Chase wouldn't fucking _laugh_ at for once…!

A sharp tingling sensation in his hands caused red eyes to flicker open once more and Jack grinned brightly to see a perfectly round ball of concentrated energy between his palms. It was small, but it was undeniably _there._

"Sweet," he crowed, "I did it!"

"Excellent work, Spicer!" Chase said firmly. "I am pleasantly surprised you have done so well so quickly. However, let us test the nature of your magic."

Jack blinked, clearly puzzled. "How do we do that?" he asked his mentor in magic.

"I will need to know the innate inclination of your energy so I will know how to best instruct you. If it is destructive, I will have to teach you how to effectively rein it in so that you don't end up destroying yourself. If it is defensive, I will have to teach you how to use the defensive to the advantage of your offense. Do you catch my meaning?"

Slowly, the youth nodded. "I think so..." he replied. "What do I do exactly...?"

Chase lifted one hand and circled it expansively. "Direct the ball you made at a nearby object. We shall then see what happens and determine the nature of the beast, so to speak."

Jack made a noise of acknowledgement and gave a cursory glance around the throne room, looking for something easily-replaceable and unneeded in case his magic turned out to be destructive in nature. He eventually spotted a planter in which a flowering of some sort grew. The genius recognized it and knew that it was not some extinct genus of flora and the planter itself was not an ancient artifact that, once gone, could never be replaced.

He turned his eyes back to the small, red ball of magic he cradled in his hands before nudging it experimentally towards the object he had decided upon.

Having never directed magic without a Shen Gong Wu before, Jack had miscalculated on the force with which to send out his energy and so the ball drifted slowly towards its target. It did not take more than a handful of seconds to get there, but there was no doubt that had it been a moving human target, it would've been easily dodged.

Nonetheless, the magic _did_ get there and a light as red as the ball had been flashed when it did so, fading away to reveal…a column.

The planter had turned into a column. It was not an unordinary column and matched perfectly with every other column in the vicinity of it. The only thing that made it look slightly out of place was the fact of its positioning in the throne room; out of line with all of the other columns.

"Cool," Jack murmured, looking at the result of his mystic energy. "So…I've got transmogrification magic, then?"

Chase frowned at the newly formed column. It looked perfectly ordinary, perfectly and really there. But something felt... off.

"I'm not certain," he murmured, getting to his feet. He went over to the column; walked all around it, inspecting it visually. Finally, he reached a hand tentatively forward... and his eyes widened as his hand went through. Grinning, he made contact with the flowers that were still there in the planter and pulled one free, which dispelled the illusion immediately.

Turning to Jack, he quirked a smile of amusement and satisfaction at his student. "Just as I suspected: your magic does not change things physically, Spicer. Instead, it changes the way material objects are _perceived_. In short, your magic is deceptive and illusory; quite fitting, actually."

Jack was _sure_ there was an insult to his character _there._ He scowled, demanding, "What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?"

Chase tossed the flower to Jack. "You yourself are illusory and deceptive by nature, likely out of an innate instinct to survive. You lie to your benefit; you cheat to gain whatever advantage you can; you use disguise to evade outright death. Though less than honorable, it is a clever strategy and one that has obviously kept you from the worst harm throughout your years."

The goth caught the flower and stared at it a moment before turning his gaze back to the warlord. It was obvious he could hardly comprehend what had been said: _that_ certainly didn't sound like an attack or verbal abuse, and _that_ was unusual.

The dragonlord gave a catty smile to the younger man. "Not _everything_ I say about you need be an insult, Spicer. I _am_ capable of compliments - when they are warranted."

Jack flushed ever so slightly. "Yeah, well..." he began awkwardly, "...could've fooled me..."

Chase laughed; a rich, husky chuckle of dark amusement. He walked slowly past his still-seated student. As he did so, he dropped one large hand onto Jack's head and ruffled the thick, sunset-red hair.

"Continue practicing," he ordered. "Learn what it feels like to summon your magic; know every nuance of the sensation of calling upon your power. Find and know your limits. This is particularly important, Spicer. Every being has limits. If you know what yours are, then you will better be able to budget your power for attack or defense."

He felt Spicer nod beneath his hand. Lifting his hand from his student's head, he began walking away as he added, "While you're at it, see if you can directly influence the form of illusion the energy takes. Since you are brand new at this, I will not fault you if you cannot get it the first try. Remember that my duty is to teach you if you find you cannot do it on your own."

He was almost gone from the room when he heard Spicer's voice calling for him.

"Chase...?" the youth inquired, almost hesitantly in tone.

The Heylin lord stopped and glanced over his shoulder at the younger man. "Yes...?"

Jack was quiet for a second, thinking on what exactly he should say. He eventually decided on, "Thanks. For helping me with this, I mean..."

Pleased, Chase nodded his head graciously. "You are welcome, Spicer."

With that, he quit the room, giving Jack peace and quiet with which to get his "studying" done.

The youth breathed deeply in the silence and emptiness of being alone.

Then, he got to practicing.

Jack spent hours by himself learning the ins and outs of his magic: he practiced the summoning and dismissal of it, the precision and the force of it, and as Chase had instructed, his limits.

He found out the hard way that his limit was somewhere around two and a half hours of straight magic usage, at the end of which he simply _could not_ summon any more of it.

The goth got to his feet at that point, knees oddly weak and a dizzying feeling of vertigo overtaking him to the point he actually had to latch onto a nearby object for a few moments until it dissipated.

Dissipate it did, however, and Jack inhaled slowly thinking over the progress he'd made today alone.

He had managed to learn the amount of force with which he should direct his magic so as to avoid missing moving targets (theoretically, of course) and he had little doubt in his ability to call up and to order back his magic at his will.

He hadn't made any significant improvement in terms of making objects look like what he wanted them to. They simply took on the shape of something that would appear natural and least out of the ordinary in the room.

Still, not bad, the goth decided. Chase could help him with that part later; the man had said he would, after all.

It was with a grin on his face that Jack at last sauntered out of the room, proud of that which he had accomplished.

**--**

**A/N: Chapter Four of Mystic Roots! ^^**

**Thanks for reading, and I hope you guys like it! :D**


	5. The Apprentice

**Mystic Roots**

**By: CrystallicSky**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Xiaolin Showdown or any of its characters, nor do I make any profit or attempt to with the writing of this or any of my other pieces.**

**Warnings: Language, homosexuality, some violence/gore later on, etc.**

**--**

Chase took a walk down Memory Lane.

Several lanes, actually; each floor in his mountain palace held a gallery from a time and place he had particularly wanted to remember. Currently, he was walking the long hall that held the mementos he'd taken from his participation in the Sack of Rome. Though his golden dragon eyes took in the old and bloodied weapons, the antique Roman decorations, the preserved head on a pike, his mind was definitely centered in a more modern time and place.

Spicer had made a tremendous amount of progress in the three - nearly four - months since he'd asked the Heylin Tai Chi master to be his teacher. After conquering Spicer's tendency towards laziness and procrastination, Jack had begun learning and improving at a swift rate. He'd even mastered using his magic against moving targets after Chase had assigned his warriors to work with Spicer.

Chase left the Sack of Rome and continued on to the central courtyard. He was no longer in the mood for lingering in ancient history; not when he had such new and fantastic memories of Spicer's most recent accomplishments. Only last week, the fourth-blood had defeated the Xiaolin Monks using his new skills. He'd turned them around and around with illusions of himself, and then, as the finale, had tricked them into following a Jack-illusion over the edge of a cliff that Spicer had disguised as solid ground. Only Pedrosa's wind powers and Dojo's quick action had saved the four monks from being splattered into thousands of messy pieces.

The dragonlord grinned smugly as he remembered the feral anger darkening the monks' faces while they glared hatred at Jack for besting them.

Speak of the devil... Jack walked up to him, smiling brightly, his crimson eyes almost glowing with contentment and confidence.

"Hi, Chase," his student practically chirped in happiness, raising his hand in greeting.

Chase smiled. "Nice try, Spicer." Bending down, he reached his hand directly through Jack's groin and curved his hand to Diol's skull; fondled the black jaguar's ears in a firm caress as the illusion of the albino man melted away. He smirked at the empty air beside him. "Your fairy tricks do not work on _me_, fourth-blood."

The seemingly empty space beside the warlord melted away, as well, revealing the _true_ Jack standing there with arms crossed over his chest and a dismayed expression on his face. "Am I that obvious?" he inquired, obviously disappointed.

Chase straightened up to face Jack fully. "To other people...? No. Actually, the only reason _I_ can tell the difference is because I am familiar with the feel of your magic in use. As you have been learning what it feels like to access that magic, I have been learning what it feels like when you have accessed it. It is your ID, if you will; the particular sense of your magic. Should anyone attempt to pretend to be you, they will fail because of that one little qualifier. So, yes, I know when you are using your magic and it does not fool _me_. Ignoring that, you are quite the skilled illusionist."

Jack smiled. "You really think so?"

Chase nodded. "Of course! I am _very_ pleased with your progress, Spicer. You have a natural aptitude for learning and, in this particular matter, you are taking to your heritage as easily and naturally as a fish learns to swim. You very likely would have surpassed your half-blood father even if he had bothered to train himself to use his magic."

Jack's grin broadened, though it took on a mildly sheepish quality. "Well..." he said, "I _am_ learning from the best!"

The dragonlord made an amused sound. He reached out; patted Spicer's back a couple of times, careful to not strike too hard lest the delicate white skin be unbearably bruised.

"Do not be so modest, Jack," he said with a smirk. "It does not suit you at all. Be proud of what you have accomplished; you have _much_ to be proud of!"

At that, the genius seemed oddly perplexed. "I do?" he questioned.

"Of course you do. You may be one of the only ones in the world to possess such a small fraction of fae-blood and still retain the ability to use it so well, and you learned from a non-fae teacher. I could instruct you only in the very basics of magic as mine is quite different from yours. In terms of specific techniques, I could give you nothing, and yet you improvised your own methods and mastered yourself beautifully. If you cannot be proud of such a feat, you might as well join the ever 'modest' Xiaolin."

Jack immediately snorted in derision. "Alright," he conceded, "I'm totally awesome. _Anything_ to keep me from going Good!" It was clear from the sarcasm in his voice that doing such was the _last_ thing on his mind.

Chase regarded his student intently. "In fact…hm. Spicer, I am very pleased with you and all that you have learned in my keeping. It is obvious that, not knowing of your hidden ancestry, I had grievously underestimated your potential. All that said… how would you feel about staying on with me even though you've learned all that I have to teach you?"

Everything in Jack's being froze utterly. His innermost hopes, which had long been suppressed to avoid disappointment, _sky-rocketed_ and he couldn't stop the next words that escaped his lips. "What, like...y-you mean like a...minion...?"

The dragonlord shook his head. "I was thinking more along the lines of being my apprentice."

There were a few seconds that were pure shock. Then, "Oh, my god, really?! That's awesome! Yes! Yes, of course, I'd _love_ to be your apprentice, holy crap! This is...this is..." A squeal escaped the practically-bouncing youth, and should his smile have been any wider, it would've doubtlessly torn something.

The Heylin sorcerer chuckled. "You are far too easy to please, Spicer. As for myself, I would like to get some sparring done before dinner." He snapped his fingers at the jaguar warrior waiting beside him. "Come, Diol." He began walking away, but glanced back over his shoulder. "I shall see you in the dining hall later... my apprentice."

Jack's ecstatic grin remained and he nodded, watching the retreating figure of his master (_master!_) as he left.

The goth was unbearably happy with the new development as he turned and trotted off to his room. He had to get ready for his first dinner as the official apprentice to Chase Young, he thought to himself, on Cloud 9.

There was nothing that could've prepared him for the chloroform rag that was pressed against his mouth and nose from behind, knocking him out cold and allowing the perpetrator to drag his limp body wherever they saw fit.

**--**

**A/N: Chapter Five of Mystic Roots! ^^**

**Thanks for reading, and I hope you guys like it! :D**


	6. The Confrontation

**Mystic Roots**

**By: CrystallicSky**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Xiaolin Showdown or any of its characters, nor do I make any profit or attempt to with the writing of this or any of my other pieces.**

**Warnings: Language, homosexuality, some violence/gore later on, etc.**

**--**

When Jack woke up, it was to a feeling of fuzziness in his limbs and a chilling metal cold beneath him. It took _far_ too much effort to force his limbs to respond as he slowly pushed himself up with difficulty, and he found that the sense of familiarity he now felt within Chase's mountain palace was entirely absent.

He knew instantly that something was wrong.

That something was easily identified as he opened his eyes, blinking a few times to dispel the blur of his vision, and saw _bars._

He shivered and straightened, glancing around from within the cage he'd been locked into to determine what had happened and where the hell he was…

…or tried to, anyways, failing as a sharp pain echoed in his skull and efficiently put his thought processes on hold until it faded away.

"Ow," he whimpered quietly, rubbing a hand at his temple, "my _head…_"

A hard kick to the metal bars of his cage created a sharp clang of noise that made the abominable pain in Jack's head even worse. Even as he clutched at his head, groaning, a voice spoke up over the sound of rattling metal and jangling nerves.

"You in pain, _cuzão_?"

It took Jack's brain a few moments to translate the Portuguese swear-word: 'asshole'; he was being called an asshole... in Portuguese. That language was spoken primarily in Brazil.

Lifting his head, Spicer looked directly into Raimundo Pedrosa's green eyes; turned a poisonous shade by anger and hate.

"Good," the darkly tanned Xiaolin Monk grunted. "'S just what you _get_ for humiliatin' us like that an' bein' all evil an' shit."

Anger rose up through the disorientation and the pain in Jack's skull. "Wh...what?!" he demanded. "Fuck you, this..." he looked at the cage around him, "this isn't fair! I _beat_ you; big fucking deal! You...you can't just...do _this!_"

"That's so not true!" a shrill voice cut in, and Kimiko charged forward to stand beside Pedrosa. Her tiny hands gripped the bars as she shrieked at Jack. "You _totally_ tricked us! You won by being a deceitful, evil _jerk_, and so we can _too_ do this!"

The appearance of the girl startled Jack and he skittered back in the cage a bit; just until he saw her mouth quirk into a grin at having frightened him. He scowled darkly and challenged, "Like you guys have never tricked me to win? Or taken advantage of something about me? You do it all the fucking time and you _know_ it!"

An expression of pure, insulted outrage warped the Japanese girl's dainty features an instant before she took a deep breath and _screamed_ at him.

"_LIAR!_" she shrieked, her voice hitting an octave that had dogs barking for miles around. "You dirty, filthy _liar!_" She rattled the bars of Spicer's cage as hard as she could.

A large hand settled on her shoulder, calming her down, even as Omi stepped up beside her.

"Do not listen to his blasphemous lies," the small monk said primly, folding his hands together beneath his sleeves.

"Yeah," Clay agreed, glaring at Jack through the fall of his blond hair. "He's jus' provin' what a loser he is, lyin' to us all the time."

"What the fuck are you _talking_ about?!" the genius cried in frustration. _Nothing_ was getting through to them! "You guys are like a broken frickin' record," he opined, "a broken, scratched-up, illogical record!"

"Sticks an' stones, _cuzão_," Raimundo shot back. A tiny, wicked grin curled his lips; an expression that looked very much like something Chase Young would wear when preparing to rip someone to shreds. Jack shuddered at the sight of it. "Kimiko did a little research on you. We _heard_ what those people called you back in New Zealand: we _know_ what you are, and we got somethin' _very_ special in store for _you_, Jackie-baby."

Red eyes were wide at the sinister promise and a cold feeling of dread settled like a rock in the pit of the goth's stomach. "Wh...what are you gonna do...?" he warily asked. He had a feeling he wasn't going to like this...

That feeling only got worse when the frightening smile appeared on the other three monks' faces even as Raimundo reached for the padlock.

--

Chase Young's army of warriors huddled largely out of the way, but refused to run and hide, even though that might have been the smart thing to do at the moment. Smarter, in the long run, was staying nearby, so when their master finally calmed down enough to think clearly, they could answer his call to arms instantly, as they had no doubt he would do.

Because his apprentice had been stolen from him.

When Jack had failed to show up for dinner, Chase had not initially worried. He routinely allowed Jack to play around in his "off" hours in the working lab that Chase had transported from the Spicer Mansion to an unused chamber in the mountain. Quite likely, his new apprentice had lost track of time. He'd sent Diol to go fetch the young man and had waited.

Diol had returned at a run nearly twenty minutes later, telepathing the news that Jack was no longer in the mountain and that his scent had faded hours ago.

Immediately, Chase had ordered his warriors to sniff out the entire mountain. A tigress had tracked Jack's last known location: the very hallway where the dragonlord had asked Spicer to be his apprentice and Jack had gleefully accepted.

She had also reported the lingering scent of a chemical agent that had been used against Spicer.

Chase had unleashed a brutal scream of rage. What followed was a temper tantrum of truly massive proportions as he vented his anger; punching and gouging at rock walls, interspersed with throwing whatever wasn't nailed down.

Slowly, Chase calmed down from the unthinking rage and fear that had scorched through him when he'd realized Jack had been stolen from him. Those gods-damned _monks_... what torturous hell were they putting the young fae through for besting them in a Showdown?

Looking around, he spied his warriors lurking nearby. A sharp command brought them instantly to his side. A harshly uttered spell later, the entire group teleported to the Xiaolin Temple.

Immediately, the small Heylin army fanned out; the warriors assuming their human forms as they began systematically searching every building on the temple grounds for any sign of Jack. Elderly monks tried to resist and were defeated with frightening ease as the Heylin force moved in search of one of their own.

It didn't take them long to find Jack.

In a small shed on the far side of the estate, Jack Spicer lay convulsing in a metal cage while the Xiaolin Dragons grouped around the container, smirking at the frantically thrashing figure within.

Chase scattered them like bowling pins as he rushed forward; knocked them aside to get at the cage. He twisted the metal bars apart as if they were made of paper - tore them away and stepped into the cage. He looked down at Jack, feeling utterly helpless for the first time in a long time, before he glared at the young monks who were just now getting back on their feet.

"What did you _DO_ to my apprentice?!" he shouted at them, fury lending power and volume to his voice.

They said nothing, however; merely smirked at him wickedly.

A wave of his hand crunched them backwards into the flimsy wooden walls of the hut and left them pinned there as he knelt down to tend to his apprentice.

Jack choked, coughing dryly and raggedly as he tried to force himself up to properly greet his master. He shook like a leaf as he tried and for a long time, could not even raise his head. When he did, however...

The fae's flesh was two or three shades paler than it ought to have been, even factoring in the knowledge that it was normally _white_ to begin with. His red eyes were bloodshot, tears of pain and discomfort streaming from them, and his mouth…

His mouth was smeared with red ochre, the powdery red dirt clinging to his lips and cheeks even as the youth quivered helplessly on the ground.

Without further preamble, Jack broke eye-contact with his overlord as he bent and vomited harshly, his stomach emptying yet more of the ochre before the poisonous effect of it took further hold of him and he collapsed back down into a dead faint.

Chase stared down at his apprentice in horror for a few moments. Then, quickly, he checked to be certain Jack was still breathing. He was reassured to find breath wafting in and out of Spicer's lungs and a too-fast, but definitely there pulse.

Behind him, one of the monks made the mistake of snickering.

Kimiko was punched _through_ the flimsy wooden wall of the shed barely a second later.

Deadly calm, utterly furious, Chase systematically beat the _crap_ out of the young monks. The elderly monks that could still walk were hobbling toward the ruckus as fast as they could, but they could not move fast enough to stop him as he dealt swift and brutal vengeance on the hypocritical brats until they were puddled on the ground, crying and snotting and bleeding.

It was only when Master Fung, accompanied by Dojo, ran onto the scene that the everlord so much as paused.

"Chase Young," the old monk demanded roughly, glaring in a mixture of anger and horror to see what'd been done to his four apprentices, "why have you visited such harm upon my students?!"

"You want to speak of harm, do you?" Chase retorted. "Very well, then, I answer your question with one of my own: What _else_ am I meant to do after such cruelty and disgrace is visited upon _my_ student?!"

Fung paused at the mention of the Heylin man's student and he briefly glanced around in search of Jack Spicer.

When his eyes found him, he almost wished they had not.

The redheaded youth lay unconscious within a broken cage, his cheek wet in a puddle of dirt and vomit. The elder monk recognized the dirt as a kind poisonous to Maori fae, this information only supported by the fact that Spicer breathed very heavily, his pale face flushed a deep red from what was likely fever.

Fung quite literally had nothing to say.

"Th... th't's no 'scuse," whispered a new voice. Fung and Dojo looked down and saw Raimundo staring up at them through his not-yet-swollen black eye. "_He_... 'sgraced us! _Tricked_ us! _Filho de puta_..."

"It does not _work_ that way, young monks," Fung snapped.

Omi stared up at his mentor from where he lay on the ground, his collarbones so badly broken he couldn't even think of moving without cringing. "What? Master Fung..."

The elderly monk shook his head. "As the saying goes, all is fair in love and war. War is what happens on the battlefield, and tricks and illusions are fair. The lot of _you_ have visited the same upon _Spicer_ under similar circumstances. What you have done, here and now... this is deceit and wickedness at its most disgraceful. You have kidnapped young Spicer from his home and poisoned him under no provocation!"

Omi closed his eyes, shame beginning to stir in him. From somewhere else, several yards away from him, he heard Kimiko say weakly, "But... it was a... preemptive strike..."

Chase gave a sharp, bitter laugh. "'Preemptive strike' is merely a euphemism for 'sucker punch', Xiaolin _thugs_." He glared at Fung. "_Pray_ that my apprentice survives this. It is the only way I will go easy on _your_ idiot students when I have more time to spare for resolving this issue."

Without another word, he crouched down and scooped Jack into his arms. Once his warriors had gathered around them, he teleported them all home to the mountain palace, leaving Fung and Dojo to clean up the mess the thoughtless brats had provoked.

The next hour was fraught with discomfort and disgust as Jack was fed medicine to make him puke up the red ochre still left in his stomach. There was nothing Chase could do for any of it that had already assimilated into his system, but hopefully, there hadn't been enough time for too much of the poison to seep in. Once Jack's stomach was voided, he was cleaned and then tucked into bed.

Chase, rather than assign a warrior to watch over the young man, settled himself down in Jack's sinfully comfortable armchair and kept a pensive watch over his apprentice while Jack slept.

**--**

**A/N: Chapter Six of Mystic Roots! ^^**

**Thanks for reading, and I hope you guys like it! :D**


	7. The Happy Ending

**Mystic Roots**

**By: CrystallicSky**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Xiaolin Showdown or any of its characters, nor do I make any profit or attempt to with the writing of this or any of my other pieces.**

**Warnings: Language, homosexuality, some violence/gore later on, etc.**

**--**

Jack's consciousness hazed back to him slowly, almost as if he didn't _want_ to wake up.

At the feeling that assailed him as soon as he became a bit more aware, the youth realized precisely why that might be so.

He ached _everywhere._ Every last inch of him felt as if it'd been run over by a truck, then a woolly mammoth, and then the truck again, but most of the ache was concentrated in his throat and stomach.

He felt _raw_ inside, as if he'd swallowed _acid!_ What the hell _happened_ to him?

With a soft, barely audible groan, Jack shifted and realized he was in a bed, at the least. The feel of the sheets and blankets, however, told him it was not his own. The goth opened his eyes and slowly, cautiously attempted to sit up.

A hand, large and warm and heavy, pressed to his chest and gently forced him back down. To his shock, he found himself lying beside Chase Young.

The warlord had stripped off his armor prior to getting into bed; had, in fact, stripped off everything except his trousers before slipping beneath the covers to share body heat with Spicer. Now, he met Jack's confused look with steady calm.

"You're not ready to be up and about just yet, Spicer," he said quietly.

Jack did not protest his master's words and remained flat against the mattress. Still, he was confused and so voiced as much. "Chase," he began, "what…what happened? What am I doing…" he glanced around briefly, recognizing nothing familiar, "wherever this is?"

The dragonlord stretched vigorously, and then relaxed again before he muttered, "My bed."

Red eyes instantly went wide as saucers. "Your bed?" the fae meeped. "Wh-what am I doing _here?!_"

Chase was silent for some time. Eventually, he shifted to settle his hand flat against Jack's chest again, directly over the quickly beating heart. The thump-thump pulsing against his palm reassured him as nothing else could at the moment.

"The monks proved their cowardice and disregard to their own Xiaolin rules by drugging you and forcing red ochre down your throat to poison you. I took action and brought you back here to care for you. You are... incredibly lucky, Spicer. Had your body not immediately rejected the majority of that ochre, I've little doubt you would've succumb to the poisoning and died."

With that information, Jack recalled what'd happened with frightening clarity. There was no doubt that _that_ was why he was feeling so awful even though he'd managed to live through it.

However, it did not tell him the reason Chase Young, ultimate Heylin badass, had taken the goth to bed with him.

He asked.

"So...why-"

"You are here because I wanted to be certain you would live. You are here because you are my apprentice. You are here because I _want_ you to be." He raised himself up on one elbow so he could see Jack at a better angle. "You are here... because I do not want to risk losing you again."

So saying, he bent and touched his lips to Jack's in a soft-soft kiss.

If brains were capable of making audible sounds, Jack's would've made that of a train screeching to a full halt. Thoroughly shocked and confused by the kiss, the youth jerked away.

Quickly, Chase caught hold of Jack's chin. "No; do not pull away from me."

He kissed Jack again, more firmly than before. He kept the kiss simple; a caress of lips against lips without intrusion.

This time, Jack did not pull away, but neither did he react whatsoever. How was he _supposed_ to? He'd never been kissed before, most certainly never by his idol and maybe-kinda-sorta-crush!

The fae remained perfectly still as the everlord's lips were pressed against his own, stiff and tense and _nervous._

It didn't take long for Chase to realize he was the only one involved in the kissing. Pulling back, he frowned down at his apprentice and would-be lover. "Why do you not kiss me back? You are allowed to do so."

"Y-yeah, but do I have a choice...?" Jack hesitantly inquired.

Chase's scowl deepened. "Of course you do! Always. I will never force you in anything of an intimate nature. I prefer to keep myself above such reprehensible atrocities. My devotion to evil only goes so far, Spicer."

The youth calmed at the assurance, feeling a good deal less unnerved by the preceding events. "So...I have a say in this?" he ascertained.

"Yes; of course." Chase bent and nuzzled against Jack lightly. "I admit I want you, Jack. You have become so much more to me than I ever would have imagined. It is a pleasant surprise. But I will not _take_ what I want; not in this instance. To do so would render anything we do together meaningless. Whatever we have together is because we both want it."

Jack shivered under the ministrations and was for a long time quiet, thinking it over. Then, boldly, he caught the dragonlord's face and kissed him firmly, likely before his courage in doing so could run out.

Chase made a rough sound of pleasure. He settled himself more firmly against Jack and kissed the younger man deeply. He took his time, pressing kiss after kiss against Jack's lips, slowly coaxing them to part for him. When they had, he deepened the kiss firmer, and delighted in the startled, but appreciative groan that Spicer gave.

The two men twined greedily together on the bed, enjoying the touch and taste of each other. Jack, however, was still tired and out of sorts, and so the kiss did not last too long. Regretfully, the kiss faded, though they still held each other close.

"Wow," Jack breathed, swallowing hard. "Ch...Chase?"

The dragonlord nuzzled his lover again. "Yes, Spicer?"

"......I'm feeling kinda dizzy," the youth informed.

Chase settled back down on the bed and tested the back of his hand against Jack's forehead.

"You still have a fever," he informed his young lover. "You should rest."

Jack did not protest the advice; rather, he was grateful for it. "Yeah," he agreed, making himself comfortable amongst the pillows, "okay..."

The warlord tucked his lover close, inviting Jack to lay comfortably against him. "I will keep watch over you, in case those blasted monks decide on trying to 'get even' with you in your moment of weakness. Granted, I dealt them quite a bit of damage, but I wouldn't put it past them to try a... what is the phrase you use? A 'dick move'?"

The goth snickered at the sound of such an informal, modern phrase escaping his overlord's lips, but he didn't argue the reason behind what the older man was saying. The monks probably _were_ assholes enough to try and come murder him in his sleep even _after_ being on the ass-end of an ass-kicking.

Besides, it gave Jack an excuse to cuddle up to Chase, and there was no _way_ Jack had a problem with that.

He did so and as his tired body quickly began sending him to sleep, he thought of all that was going _right_ for him, for once. He had magic of his own and had been trained in how to use it, by Chase Young, no less!

Furthermore, said warlord had decided to take him on as a full-time apprentice instead of simply a magic-student. Now, he would be learning the ways of Heylin and maybe even some physical training instead of simply instruction regarding magic!

If all that weren't enough he had just been kissed by Chase; _kissed!_ The dragonlord wanted him as an apprentice _and_ a lover!

Jesus, a _lot_ of good stuff had ended up happening, hadn't it?

Jack smiled at the thought and before he could fall all the way asleep, he spoke, "Chase?"

Chase tucked the covers around the both of them, and then settled one large hand against Jack's head and began rubbing. He knew the soothing sensation of fingers massaging against the scalp would ease more of his young lover's discomfort and help him rest. "Yes, Spicer?"

Jack sighed in pleasure at the sensation, his exhaustion seeming to amplify until he was no longer able to even keep his eyes open. Still, he felt he had to say what he wanted to say, and so he did. "Thank you," he offered gratefully. "For...well, everything."

Chase smiled. "You're welcome... _my_ Jack."

**--**

**A/N: The Seventh and Final Chapter of Mystic Roots! ^^**

Once again, I'd like to thank Silvarbelle for all her help with this and of course, all the people who've read all the chapters up to this one!

Thanks everybody, and I hope you liked the fic! :D

(P.S.- There will not be a sequel, so don't bother asking for one! ;P )


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